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I was thinking about it, I played paintball for about 5 years with a shake and shoot hopper, how the hell did I do that? I tried out a shake and shoot the other day and could only shoot three rounds before having to violently shake the gun. Is it that guns had way more kick in the 90's (I was using Spyders and Vm68s since all I had access to way CO2 and automags don't like CO2 in Maine) which shook the hopper for me? Or was it just that ignorance was bliss, and that was part of the game??? I do remember a squeegee being a lifeline every player had on the field with them...

I was thinking about it, I played paintball for about 5 years with a shake and shoot hopper, how the hell did I do that? I tried out a shake and shoot the other day and could only shoot three rounds before having to violently shake the gun. Is it that guns had way more kick in the 90's (I was using Spyders and Vm68s since all I had access to way CO2 and automags don't like CO2 in Maine) which shook the hopper for me? Or was it just that ignorance was bliss, and that was part of the game??? I do remember a squeegee being a lifeline every player had on the field with them...

So does that mean Tom K has been getting a cut of every e-loader out there?

It seems that the inclusion of the agitating hopper in the patent application is to help establish a background with which he can demonstrate the novel, and therefor patentable aspects of his force-fed system. In a way, he is saying "this is what we have, this is what I propose, and this is why they are different." It should outline that if you really read into the body of the patent (which is usually not the most exciting thing to do).

In other words, he didn't patent the agitating hopper here, so he isn't getting a cut.

Of course, I seem to remember that there were a couple of patents, including some of those pertinent to HP air, that Tom did have, but chose not to enforce. This was back when paintball was a gentlemanly pursuit, and certain individuals believed that an altruistic, open-source approach to paintball would help to grow the sport. Maybe that is a little embellished, but some of the older patents weren't really enforced, and no royalties paid/collected.